One of the characteristics of most mobile phones is its ability to store numerous contacts in an internal contact database or on a SIM card or both. The contact data base is often referred to as a “phonebook” and comprises contact information that you would typically find in larger PDA and computer applications such as Microsoft Outlook™. The phone book can accommodate fields such as name, address, multiple telephone numbers, multiple e-mail addresses, and the like. Mobile phone users routinely make use of the phonebook function for convenience. The phonebook function is even more convenient when it can be paired with or “synchronized” with a contact database on a computer. This eliminates the need to individually key in contact data for each entry in the phonebook which can be prohibitively time consuming using the mobile phone's keypad.
Typically, a mobile phone user will have multiple groups of contacts in his database. Groups can be organized by family, friends, work team members, professional acquaintances, emergency contacts, etc. Often a need arises to share a common list of contacts among a group. One group member may maintain a contact list for the entire group and update it periodically. When updates occur, the rest of the group needs to update their mobile phone contact list also to make sure that everyone has the latest contact data. Unfortunately there has not been a simple straightforward mechanism for updating the contacts on a group of mobile phones without requiring each member of the group to key in the new contact data themselves.
What is needed is a mechanism that allows groups of mobile phone users that share common contacts to effortlessly update their respective contact lists without each user having to key in the new contact data.